Best Laid Plans

We'd had the North Rim Perseids trip planned for months.  The frau lined up the accomodations, the buddy lined up the trailer for our scooters, all I had to do was gas up the Burb and steer.

The buddy goes to pick up the trailer, and none of the three on the lot had working lights.  No trailer, the bikes stay home.  No biggie.  However, each of the three nights we were in Kanab, UT, perfectly situated at about 5800 ft on the east edge of a small, dim (in multiple ways) town - it stormed.  Completely overcast.  Couldn't see stars, much less meteorites.  Thinned a bit on Saturday night to the point you could make out where the moon was, but not much more.  No Perseids.

We did have great weather for three rounds of golf and for our visits to Zion and Bryce Canyons, and to the North Rim.  I'd forgotten that Bryce runs up above 9000 ft elevation.  The North Rim is about 8000 ft and is so much nicer than the south side.  We rode the tram through Zion for 90 minutes and spent some good time in the museum there.

Ended up driving right at 1200 miles in the four days.  The good news is that the behemoth got a bit over 18 mpg, fully loaded with telescope, luggage, four sets of golf clubs and four full sized people on board.  The bad news is that, when filling it up, the pump automatically shuts off at $75.00 whether you're full or not.  I wasn't.